Wookiee - Distributed Messaging (Cluster Component)

For Configuration information see Cluster Config

Adding to Pom

Add the jfrog repo to your project first:

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>JFrog</id>
        <url>http://oss.jfrog.org/oss-release-local</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

Add latest version of wookiee:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.webtrends</groupId>
    <artifactId>wookiee-cluster_2.11</artifactId>
    <version>${wookiee.version}</version>
</dependency>

Overview

With the benefits of distributed cluster of nodes, developers can take advantage of Publish-Subscribe or Send-Subscribe messaging patterns. These patterns have the advantage that the sender of messages has no knowledge of the receivers. The sender simply uses a 'topic' to send messages to instead of having to know that actual address of the receiver.

This pattern allows for our systems to scale by adding additional receivers without the need to change logic or re-deploy with the knowledge of new receivers.

For a working example see Wookiee - Cluster Example

Basic Usage

The system is designed so that a developer simply needs to apply a trait (interface) on an actor in order to have full access to this functionality. Wookiee is responsible for managing the peer to peer communication and thus the developer of the service does not need to handle any of that information. The act of 'publishing' a message guarantees that the message will be sent to all subscribers, while 'sending' a message will round-robin to only one of the subscribers.

Sending/Receiving Messages

In order to take full benefit of the functionality one simply needs to apply the trait MessagingAdapter and then start interacting with the system. When an actor subscribes to a topic it will then receive instances of com.webtrends.communication.Message which is the container that consists of the topic, sender, and actual message content that was sent or published/sent.

import com.webtrends.communication.MessagingAdapter
import com.webtrends.communication.Message

// Define the actor and have it apply the MessagingAdapter trait
class MyReceiverActor extends Actor with ActorLoggingAdapter with MessagingAdapter {
    def preStart: Unit = {
        // Subscribe to a specific topic to receive messages from other nodes in the cluster
        subscribe("cluster-topic", self /* I am the receiver, but could be another ActorRef */, false /* this is a subscription for messages from other cluster nodes */)
        // Subscribe to a specific topic to receive messages from other nodes in the cluster and the sender expects a response
        subscribe("cluster-topic-with-response", self /* I am the receiver, but could be another ActorRef */, false /* this is a subscription for messages from other cluster nodes */)
        // Subscribe to a specific topic to receive messages from only within this node
        subscribe("internal-topic", self /* I am the receiver, but could be another ActorRef */, true/* this is a subscription for messages from only this node*/)
    }
    def postStop: Unit = {
        // Unsubscribe from the given topics
        unsubscribe("cluster-topic", self /* I am the receiver, but could be another ActorRef */)
        unsubscribe("cluster-topic-with-response", self /* I am the receiver, but could be another ActorRef */)
        unsubscribe("internal-topic", self /* I am the receiver, but could be another ActorRef */)
        // Alternatively, you can unsubscribe from several topics in one call
        //unsubscribeFromMany(Seq("cluster-topic","cluster-topic-with-response", "internal-topic"), self)
    }
    def receive = {
        // The received message is wrapped and includes the senders information as well as the topic and actual message
        case Message("cluster-topic", msg) => // Do something with the message now
        case Message("cluster-topic-with-response", msg) => sender() ! "an answer"
    }
}

// Define the actor and have it apply the MessageServiceAdaptor trait
class MySenderActor extends Actor with ActorLoggingAdapter with MessagingAdapter {
    def receive = {
        case "send-external-message" =>
            // We receive a hypothetical message that tells us to send off a message for a given topic
            send("cluster-topic", SomeMessage("somedata"), false /* I wanted this message to not be handled locally */)
        case "send-external-message-with-response" =>
            // We receive a hypothetical message that tells us to send off a message for a given topic and uses a future to handle the response
            sendWithFuture("cluster-topic", SomeMessage("somedata"), false /* I wanted this message to not be handled locally */).onComplete {
                case Success(answer) => // Do something
                case Failure(fail) => // Handle error
            }
        case "send-internal-message" =>
            // We receive a hypothetical message that tells us to send off a message for a given topic
            send("internal-topic", SomeMessage("somedata"), true /* I wanted this message to be handled locally */)
    }
}

Message Subscription Events

The ability to receive events for message subscription changes are also available through the trait MessageSubscriptionEventAdapter. If this trait is applied to an actor then the ability to register/unregister for events becomes available.